TODAY, ULVER SELF-RELEASED A NEW ALBUM

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Aug 182013
 

This is a surprising piece of news about a band who seem to specialize in surprises. Norway’s Ulver have changed their sound dramatically over the years, losing and gaining different groups of fans as their music has changed. Their latest album (their 12th) is named Messe I.X–VI.X. We’ve been expecting it, but the delivery came today in a way we didn’t expect. Here’s the full text of the message that appeared this morning on Ulver’s official site (and thank you BadWolf for the tip about this):

GLOOMY SUNDAY

Dear parish, as CDs are airborne – and leakage is imminent – we have decided to accelerate the digital release on our own platforms. We have held back as long as we can. Messe I.X–VI.X is now available from our webshop and Bandcamp. Just like that.

Again: we urge all conscientious music lovers to purchase digital from our platforms. WAV and all other formats at Bandcamp, 320 kbps MP3 via our webshop. Spotify and iTunes will follow in September, along with the release of Kscope’s standard editions.

Please share and spread the word. We hope you enjoy the somber sound of the wolves’ mass.

Ulver, Oslo, August 18 2013. Continue reading »

ONE STAYS, ONE GOES

 Metal News, Mosh Pit  6 Responses »
Aug 182013
 

(photo credit: Jessie Rose)

I read a couple of things recently that I thought were worth passing on. One is funny, one is thought-provoking and a bit surprising. One is about a band who unexpectedly broke up, one is about a band who just keep going and going. We’ll start with the latter one first.

MELVINS

This piece is the funny one. Melvins were formed way back in 1983 by guitarist/vocalist Buzz Osborne, bass-player Matt Lukin, and drummer Mike Dillard, who were all schoolmates in Montesano, Washington. Dale Crover came on board in place of Mike Dillard in ’84, though Dillard came back to the band more than 20 years later and he will be appearing on their 30th anniversary album Tres Cabrones, which is due in November (with Crover moving over to bass for that record).

The band have had a changing cast of bass players. I count six since the band performed, with Jared Warren being the most recent, and that’s not counting about six more who have toured with the band but weren’t present on recordings. Yet with Osborne and Crover in place for nearly 30 years, Melvins are one of those rare bands who’ve stayed the course through life’s ups and downs.

A few days ago Dale Crover revealed the secrets of Melvins’ longevity for a Portland (Oregon) publication called Willamette Week. “Top Five Tips For Keeping A Band Together 30 Years” is a short read, so I’m going to paste it right here: Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: DENDRITIC ARBOR — “SYLVAN MATRIARCH”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Aug 172013
 

The most important cells in your brain are called neurons. They send and receive signals from other cells throughout the body, including other neurons. Dendrites are branching filaments that extend from the body of most neurons, and can be thought of as the pathways by which the neurons receive electrochemical stimulation, via synapses, and then transmit them to the body of the neuron (the soma).

The branching of dendrites extending outward from the neuron’s body is sometimes called “dendritic arborization”. Because they look like fuckin’ trees, as in trees in an arbor. The more you interact with the world around you, the more engaged and interested and stimulated you are by it, the more lush and leafy and dense your dendritic arbors are.

Actually, I really don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m just regurgitating bits of what I read when I tried to figure out what the name of this Pittsburgh band was all about. What I’m pretty sure about, however, is that their debut EP Sylvan Matriarch caused my own dendritic arbors to grow in rampant fashion, and then burned a lot of them to the ground. (Sylvan, by the way, is a word that refers to something associated with forests.) Continue reading »

SHINING PERFORMANCE I WON’T FORGET

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
Aug 162013
 

(DGR brings you a new live video by Norway’s Shining, plus an amusing history lesson about the Grünerløkka district of Oslo, the accuracy of which is probably somewhere around the median accuracy of all history.)

Pleasant surprises abounded this morning when I discovered that blackjazz group (and pretty much shoe-in’s for one of our “most infectious song” titles) Shining had recorded a live video and put in a hell of a high-energy performance of the song “I Won’t Forget” for a news station out in Norway.

The way they did it is actually really cool — setting up in an empty alleyway/blank plot where a former building was located, and then just playing to the crowd of about fifteen to twenty people who had gathered to see what the heck was going on. Some folks seem morbidly curious about the display of musical madness going on and other folks are clearly digging it. I like it because it’s probably the most raw performance footage you can catch of these guys, even when compared to the Live Blackjazz DVD. I’ve watched this clip a couple of times and I enjoy the sort of improvisational aspect of not really having a stage and watching Munkeby just wander around screaming at the camera while playing.

This clip was recorded in a district in Oslo, Norway, known as Grünerløkka – which, as soon as I can uncramp my fingers from the keyboard voodoo required to get the umlaut and crazy strikethrough letter O, I will share some fun facts about, because we here at NCS believe in educating readers and providing folks something to gaze at while they’re trapped in their nine-to-five (or in my case, four to 12:30). Plus, we don’t really have to worry about offending any actual Norwegians because Norwegians as a whole are a learned people with a high literacy rate (up in the high 90% areas!) and many of them have learned second languages. Reading NoCleanSinging would just be a waste of time for them, so we can be sure that none of them is actually here! Continue reading »

NEW DEATH/DOOM DESTRUCTION FROM INTO DARKNESS

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  6 Responses »
Aug 162013
 

 

Last November, as part of a MISCELLANY post (here), I made an impromptu review of the self-titled debut demo by an Italian band named Into Darkness. I tend to get carried away on a daily basis with bouts of metal enthusiasm, and I called that demo “one of the best death/doom releases of 2012“. But even after I calmed down as time passed, I still felt that way.

Today I discovered two new songs from Into Darkness. One, which has just been uploaded to YouTube, is named “Dreadful Omen of A Dark Millenium”. It will be included on a forthcoming 7″ EP. The second, “Shifted To the Red End of the Spectrum”, is also destined for future release on the EP or on a vinyl split, and it’s streaming on Bandcamp. These are two of four songs the band recorded earlier this year that are being released in “rough, unedited” form on pro-tape under the name Cosmic Chaos by an Italian label named Unholy Domain Records.

The two new songs are convincing evidence that Into Darkness are a band whose every release is going to be must-listen music for devoted fans of death/doom. Speaking of devotion, there’s a lot of old-school worship in the music, with strong reminders of both Incantation and Asphyx (and the latter, especially because of the resemblance of Doomed Warrior’s vocals to those of Martin van Drunen). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: BROKEN HOPE, GLORIOR BELLI, AND BOMBUS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  10 Responses »
Aug 162013
 

Well, I made it back home from Idaho last night. Thanks to the wind gods, the smoke that had shrouded the valley where I was working cleared long enough for the plane to take off. I took a few pics from outside the airport to show what was going on back in the direction I’d just come from. I’ll put those at the end of this post. But first things first: here are three kickass new songs (one of which comes with an eye-popping video) that I came across late last night after I got home.

BROKEN HOPE

You want an old-school band who make death metal sound fresh? I give you Broken Hope. I’m getting more and more pumped up about their new album Omen of Disease (their first in 14 years). One week ago we streamed the first advance track from the album (“The Flesh Mechanic”). And then yesterday the band’s label started giving away a second track (you’ve got to surrender your e-mail address to get it). This one is called “Ghastly”, and it’s just as striking as “The Flesh Mechanic”. Much of the song is simply . . . ghastly: the horrific guttural growls, the jagged riffs, the weaponlike drumming, the overarching atmosphere of menace.

But that is definitely not all this song delivers. The pulsating, harmonized guitar lead will grab your attention almost immediately. The choir will surprise you later. Or it would have if I hadn’t mentioned it (sue me). Hell of a song. Go HERE to download it.

And how about the band’s new promo photos by Stephen Jensen? Handsome motherfuckers, aren’t they? There are two more after the jump, plus a YouTube upload of the song. Continue reading »

BURNING (WITH BODYFARM)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  13 Responses »
Aug 152013
 

Things haven’t been normal around NCS the past couple of days, and I thought I’d explain why. As I mentioned earlier this week, I’ve been in south central Idaho (near Ketchum) since Monday on a day-job thing. That alone has cut into the time I usually spend on NCS. But I’m also having some trouble getting home.

I’m supposed to fly out of here and back to Seattle early evening today. But flights all day long have been delayed and canceled because there’s a fire nearby (the “Beaver Creek Fire”) that has burned 38,000 acres so far, and for the last 2 days this valley where I am has been blanketed in heavy smoke blowing in from the fire area, with an intermittent dusting of ash. It’s gotten so bad that I can’t see the surrounding mountains and I can smell the smoke even when I’m indoors.

The local airport is currently closed down due to the smoke, though my own flight hasn’t been canceled yet — they seem to anticipate that the smoke will clear in time to resume operations by the time my flight is supposed to take off.  So maybe the wind direction will change and things will clear up. And maybe it won’t. I’m now debating whether to drive 3 hours to Boise and fly out of there later tonight. The Boise airport seems to be working okay, but there’s an enormous fire blazing about 70 miles east of Boise called the Elk Fire that has already burned about 100,000 acres of land, and it’s nowhere close to being contained.

And there’s another fire called the Pony Fire Complex near Mountain Home, Idaho that has consumed about 144,000 acres. Basically, big chunks of of Idaho have become an inferno. The Governor has declared the entire state a disaster area. Continue reading »

GRAVE: “VENIAL SIN”

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Aug 152013
 

In mid-July we reported details about the new EP (Morbid Ascent) from Sweden’s Grave that had just then surfaced today. We had the release date (August 26 in Europe, September 17 in North America), we had the tasty cover art by Costin Chioreanu (above), we knew that Autopsy’s Eric Cutler was going to be contributing as a guest to two of the new songs, we knew that the EP would also include a cover of Satyricon’s “Possessed” as well as a remixed version of “Epos” from Risen From the Tomb and a track from Grave’s 1989 Sexual Mutilation demo (“Reality of Life”). What we didn’t have was actual music to hear. But now we do!

Yesterday Stereogum premiered a song from the EP named “Venial Sin”. This is one of those two tracks that includes Eric Cutler’s contributions as a guitar soloist. I find myself in complete agreement with what Aaron Lariviere wrote in his introduction to the song for Stereogum (and I would like to thank him for linking to a piece I wrote about The Ola Lindgren Diet, the comments to which made me laugh all over again when I read them yesterday, after I also laughed at what I wrote):

“Grave may as well be eternal at this point. 29 years into a career playing Swedish fucking death metal, they’re either undead or just unkillable, showing no signs of diminishing in terms of power or perseverance. One of the originals of the Swedish metal scene alongside Entombed, Dismember, and Unleashed, what makes Grave remarkable in 2013 is that they still release vital, vitriolic shit with unnatural frequency. Last year’s full-length Endless Procession Of Souls was more than a return to form — it’s actually one of my favorite death metal albums ever, right alongside the band’s debut, Into The Grave, released some 20 years earlier. Bands this old should not be this good — it’s a wondrous thing when they are. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER GOING ON TOUR IN NASTY COMPANY; TURBOCHARGED DELIVER “CHRISTCRAWLER”; AND MOTH GIVE “DISSOLVED” THE VIDEO TREATMENT

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Aug 142013
 

I’m still catching up on what has happened in the world of metal since yesterday. Here are a few more items worth talking about.

INTO THE EVERBLACK 2013

A bit earlier today I wrote about the latest artwork, news, and music concerning the new Skeletonwitch album. If I’d just waited an hour, I could have included the fact that Skeletonwitch are embarking on a North American tour this fall with The Black Dahlia Murder (as the headliner) and Fallujah. And on selected dates, that group of miscreants will be joined by Wolvhammer (who are vicious killers in their own right) or Noisem (also murderous).

This is going to be one very fine evening in the pit of musical hell. Unfortunately, it appears I will have to get in the car to visit hell, because the tour isn’t going to hit Seattle. To see if it will threaten your town, check the schedule after the jump. Continue reading »

NEW THINGS FROM SKELETONWITCH AND OMNIUM GATHERUM

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  11 Responses »
Aug 142013
 

After a night of debauchery and a half day of painfully early work, I’m finally able to start catching up on what I missed in the world of metal since yesterday afternoon. This post is devoted to two things that caught my eye right off the bat.

SKELETONWITCH

Is that album cover up there awesome or what? It’s recognizably the work of John Baizley, and I think this may be my favorite cover he’s ever done. The fact that it graces the new album by Skeletonwitch just makes it all the more killer. The complete artwork was unveiled yesterday, along with more info about the new album — Serpents Unleashed.

It’s now scheduled for release on October 29 in NorthAm (a day earlier in the UK and most of the EU, and October 25 in Germany). It was recorded earlier this year at GodCity Studio with Kurt Ballou (Converge, Trap Them, High on Fire), AND there’s a song from the album that’s being given away for free: “Burned From Bone”. Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries